^fean-ffzangoid  STBiUet^D 

^aititet-Stchet 
qWo%6*  t&ftchuijlez  ^Pan  SRienddelacz 

S^bepvinted  by  pexmiddion 
from  l(C(ohe  3 independent" 

^Dq  which  id  appended  a  dketch  of  the 

Joife  of  SVoiLieta 

cfzedexick  ofQeppel 


cfcedcxlck  S&eppel  (Bo, 


JJean-Szancoid  oJVoillekD 

Js>a,in,tet-  Sick 


cffljidi  (S^ckuylet  ^ an  oRjenddelaet 

cfbepzinted  by  pezmiddion 
from  ((C%5he  independent" 

# 

°(do  which,  id  appended  a  dhetcli  of  the 

Jo>ife  of  8)Voilleto 

tfzedetick  SGeppel 


cFzedezick  S&eppel  Sj-  (do, 


The  De  Vinne  Press 


Shepherdess  Knitting.  {Etching) 


SVoilUto  ad  an  Sicker- 


dVox&*  Sckaylet  Van  cFbendJelaez 

THE  etchings  of  Jean-Francois  Millet  (count- 
ing each  state  of  each  plate  separately)  are 
forty-four  in  number.  They  range  from  tiny 
first  essays,  roughly  scratched  on  copper  and 
printed  by  the  artist  himself  with  color  from 
his  palette,  to  large  accomplished  etchings,  beau- 
tifully printed  by  professional  hands.  These 
last  show  in  many  cases  designs  with  which 
some  of  Millet's  most  famous  paintings  have 
made  us  familiar.  Here  in  black  and  white  we 
find  again,  for  instance,  the  "Gleaners,"  the 
"Wool-Carder,"  the  "Peasant  with  Wheel- 
barrow," the  thrice-popular  "  Two  Peasants 
Going  to  Work,"  and  the  "Two  Men  Dig- 
ging." But,  even  so,  there  is  no  question  of 
"reproductive"  art.  In  etching  a  subject 
which  he  had  previously  painted  Millet  did  not 
try  to  reproduce  the  painting;  he  merely  tried 
to  give  fresh  expression,  with  a  different  artis- 
tic method,  to  a  conception  already  once  ex- 

5 


pressed  with  paint.  Each  etching  stands  on  its 
own  merit  as  an  etching,  as  frankly  and  simply 
as  though  no  painting  of  the  same  subject  were 
in  existence. 

Millet's  truly  artistic  nature  shows  in  the  fact 
that  he  went  thus  about  his  work.  And  the 
breadth  and  versatility  of  that  nature  is  con- 
vincingly proved  by  the  intrinsic  excellence  ot 
these  etchings  in  conjunction  with  the  intrinsic 
excellence  of  the  corresponding  pictures.  A 
man  who  had  given  his  whole  life  to  etching 
only,  who  had  never  thought  of  painting,  and 
had  never  cared  for  those  effects  proper  to  paint- 
ing and  not  to  etching,  could  not  have  been 
more  truly  and  markedly  a  born  etcher  than 
Millet  showed  himself  to  be — few  though  were 
the  plates  and  many  though  were  the  canvases 
he  worked  upon.  To  depend  upon  lines,  not 
tones,  for  expression  ;  to  make  every  line  "tell," 
and  to  use  no  more  lines  than  are  absolutely 
needed  to  tell  exactly  what  he  wants  to  say;  to 
speak  strongly,  concisely,  and  to  the  point  ;  to 
tell  us  much  while  saying  little  ;  to  suggest 
rather  than  to  elaborate,  but  to  suggest  in  such 
a  way  that  the  meaning  shall  be  very  clear  and 
individual  and  impressive — these  are  the  things 
the  true  etcher  tries  to  do.  And  these  are  the 
things  that  Millet  did  with  a  more  magnificent 
6 


Peasants  Going  to  Work.  (Etching) 


Digitized  by 

the  Internet  Archive 

in  2014 

https://archive.org/details/jeanfrancoismillOOvanr 


power  than  any  man,  perhaps,  since  Rembrandt. 
Other  modern  etchings  have  more  charm  than 
his — none  have  quite  so  much  feeling.  Others 
show  more  grace  and  delicacy  of  touch — none 
show  more  force  or  certainty,  and  none  a  more 
artistic  <(  economy  of  means."  Compare  one  of 
these  prints  with  the  corresponding  picture,  and 
you  will  feel,  more  deeply  than  ever  before, 
how  much  more  important  was  the  intellectual 
than  the  technical  side  of  Millet's  art.  Its 
technique  is  always  admirable,  whatever  may 
be  the  process  chosen  ;  if  it  were  not,  the  in- 
tellectual message  would  not  be  told  so  clearly. 
But  it  is  never  the  sort  of  technique  one  cares 
much  about  for  its  own  sake  ;  certainly  never 
the  sort  that  another  man,  with  a  different  mes- 
sage to  deliver,  could  wisely  try  to  imitate.  It 
is  a  means,  in  short,  and  not  an  end ;  and  a 
means  which  gets  its  interest  from  its  peculiar 
fitness  to  help  the  artist  toward  his  true  end, 
the  expression  of  his  thought  and  feeling.  Even 
the  color  that  is  so  beautiful  in  Millet's  best 
paintings  is  not,  we  find,  really  necessary  to 
express  his  inmost  power.  In  looking  at  these 
etchings  we  hardly  remember  the  delightful 
golden  tones  of  the  painted  "  Gleaners,"  the 
misty  springtime  atmosphere  of  the  "  Going  to 
Work,"  or  the  rich  and  tender  scheme  of  the 
9 


f*  Wool-Carder.' '  The  essence  of  the  painter's 
feeling  is  here,  in  these  few  strokes  of  black  on 
white  ;  and  the  essence  of  his  feeling  is  more 
valuable  than  even  the  splendid  glow  of  color 
by  means  of  which  he  enhanced,  on  canvas,  its 
effect.  Had  he  not  been  possessed  of  a  deep, 
genuine,  and  contagious  sort  of  feeling — pos- 
sessed of  it  above  all  other  modern  men — so 
simple  a  kind  of  expression  as  these  etchings 
show,  would  have  had  little  to  attract  the  ob- 
server. But  had  the  expression  been  simple 
merely,  and  not  wise  as  well,  had  its  very  sim- 
plicity not  been  the  last  word  of  artistic  power, 
intelligence,  and  subtility,  it  would  never  have 
conveyed  so  intense  and  clear  a  feeling  as  now 
it  bids  us  read.  Only  a  great  artist  could  have 
felt  as  Millet  did  ;  only  a  great  etcher  could 
have  expressed  his  feeling  with  the  needle  as 
he  did. 

It  is  interesting,  too,  to  note,  that  with  all 
the  difference  that  exists  between  one  of  these 
etchings  and  the  corresponding  paintings,  there 
is  in  each  case  great  similarity  also.  The  dif- 
ference is  in  method — the  similarity  in  con- 
ception. A  born  painter  has  been  defined  as 
one  whose  visions  of  things  imagined  are  as 
clear  and  vivid  as  his  sight  of  things  perceived. 
We  can  all  imagine  scenes  and  figures,  but 
10 


The  Woman  Carding  Wool  {Etching) 


only  the  born  artist  can  imagine  them  so  dis- 
tinctly that  he  is  impelled  to  reproduce  them, 
and  is  able  to  reproduce  them  so  exactly  that 
we  then  see  them  just  as  he  had  seen  them — 
with  their  spiritual  suggestiveness  as  well  as  their 
outward  form.  Certainly  such  words  are  true  of 
Millet's  visions.  Certainly  no  artist's  concep- 
tions can  ever  have  been  clearer,  more  of  the 
nature  of  inspirations  which  come  from  some 
undecipherable  source  and  cannot  be  altered 
even  at  the  will  of  the  mind  that  has  received 
them.  For  even  when  the  method  of  expres- 
sion, or,  so  to  say,  of  translation  is  changed, 
the  essential  characteristics  of  the  conception 
remain  the  same.  Unlike  as  are  the  two  figures 
in  execution,  the  face  and  attitude  and  expres- 
sion and  general  sentiment  of  the  etched 
<<  Wool-Carder,"  for  instance,  are  almost 
phenomenally  the  same  as  those  of  the  painted 
"Wool-Carder."  The  effect  of  the  picture 
is  very  different  from  the  effect  of  the  etching; 
but  the  meaning,  the  feeling,  the  spiritual  qual- 
ity, is  exactly  the  same  in  the  one  and  in  the 
other. 

The  woodcuts  engraved  by  Millet  himsel 
are  but  a  few  bold  and  crude  essays;  apparently, 
he  soon  gave  up  the  attempt  to  work  in  this 
way.     But  certain  designs  which  he  drew  upon 

13 


wood  were  cut  by  his  two  brothers,  and  among 
these  there  are  some  things  of  marvelous  force 
and  beauty.  No  more  striking  contrast  could 
be  imagined  than  that  which  would  exist  were 
one  of  these  cuts — say,  for  instance,  the  large 
6  '  Shepherdess  " — placed  side  by  side  with 
one  of  the  best  of  recent  American  woodcuts. 
No  comparison  would  more  clearly  show  the 
vast  range  of  the  art — the  different  kinds  of 
excellence  which  can  be  obtained  by  its  appar- 
ently simple  methods.  These  Millet  cuts  are 
of  the  school  of  the  sixteenth,  not  of  the  nine- 
teenth, century — very  simple,  very  bold, 
almost  rude  in  execution  ;  done  with  a  few 
strong  black  lines  relieved  on  broad  fields  of 
plain  paper.  So  simple  are  they  that  one  is 
tempted  to  believe  they  were  done  with  the 
old-time  knife  and  not  the  new-time  burin; 
and  so  splendidly  strong  and  "telling"  that 
one  can  hardly  believe  it  was  a  modern  French 
and  not  an  ancient  German  hand  which  drew 
and  cut  them.  A  series  of  woodcuts  engraved 
from  Millet's  drawings  by  other  hands  is  far 
less  interesting.  We  feel  how  intimate  must 
have  been  the  artistic  sympathy  of  his  brothers 
with  himself  when  we  see  how  much  of  the 
character  of  his  designs  is  lost  when  translated 
by  a  stranger's  touch. 

14 


^fie  £ife  and  the  Stchincjd  of 
^ean-cFtangoid  8)Voillet^D 

cFzedetick  SijeppeL 

Jean-Francois  Millet  was  born  in  the  little 
village  of  Gruchy,  on  the  Norman  coast,  on 
the  4th  of  October,  18  14.  There  for  genera- 
tions his  family  had  cultivated  their  small  piece 
of  ground,  and  there  the  future  artist  was 
brought  up  in  the  laborious  thrift  of  the  poorer 
French  peasantry. 

As  his  mother  could  not  be  spared  from  her 
daily  labor  in  the  fields,  the  care  of  the  child 
fell  to  the  grandmother.  Of  this  devout  and 
excellent  woman  Millet  always  cherished  the 
most  affectionate  remembrance,  and  to  her  train- 
ing he  was  chiefly  indebted  for  those  strong 
principles  of  right  and  morality  which  he  always 
maintained. 

In  the  intervals  of  his  labor  in  the  fields, 
the  boy  received  some  instruction  from  the 
Cure  of  Greville.     This  worthy  man  encour- 

17 


aged  him  to  study  Latin,  telling  him  that  through 
it  he  could  become  a  doctor  or  a  priest.  Millet 
did  learn  Latin,  but  declared  that  he  would  be 
neither  priest  nor  doctor,  but  would  help  his 
father  on  the  farm. 

The  elder  Millet  appears  to  have  been  an 
enlightened  man.  From  the  first  he  encour- 
aged his  son's  propensity  to  make  sketches  of 
the  scenes  and  persons  about  him ;  and  when,  at 
the  age  of  eighteen,  Millet  proposed  to  adopt  the 
career  of  an  artist,  the  father  replied  :  "  My  poor 
Francois,  I  cannot  well  spare  you  while  your 
brothers  are  so  young  ;  but  we  will  go  together 
to  Cherbourg  and  show  some  of  your  drawings 
to  an  artist  there,  and  if  he  considers  that  you 
have  real  talent,  I  will  consent." 

At  Cherbourg  they  showed  two  drawings  to 
Mouchel,  who  was  a  pupil  of  the  school  of 
David.  This  artist  at  first  refused  to  believe 
that  the  drawings  which  were  shown  him  could 
be  the  unaided  work  of  a  peasant-boy  ;  and  when 
at  last  convinced  that  they  were,  he  declared 
that  the  boy  had  in  him  the  making  of  a  great 
artist. 

Millet  then  commenced  his  art  studies  at 
Cherbourg,  and  while  there  he  also  read  with 
avidity  all  the  books  he  could  procure.  Be- 
sides the  French  authors,  he  was  passionately 
18 


fond  of  Shakespeare,  Walter  Scott,  Goethe,  and 
Fenimore  Cooper.  He  removed  to  Paris  at 
the  age  of  twenty-three,  and  although  he  was 
then  a  simple  peasant,  he  was  far  from  being 
an  ignorant  one.  His  letters  show  that  Millet 
was  a  man  of  intellect  and  refinement,  and  in 
after  life  it  was  his  habit  to  read  his  Bible  and 
his  Virgil  in  the  Latin. 

The  artist  has  left  a  record  of  his  first  expe- 
riences in  the  great  city.  His  main  desire  was 
to  visit  the  pictures  in  the  Louvre,  but  he  was 
too  shy  to  inquire  his  way,  and  wandered  about 
until  he  came  upon  the  building  by  chance. 

He  was  chiefly  impressed  by  the  works  of 
Mantegna,  Michael  Angelo,  and  Nicolas  Pous- 
sin  ;  but  the  artificial  prettiness  ot  Watteau  and 
Boucher  gave  him  no  pleasure,  and  he  had  a 
feeling  that  the  performing  puppets  in  their 
pictures  should  be  shut  up  in  a  box  after  their 
masquerade  was  over. 

He  became  a  pupil  of  Paul  Delaroche,  but 
could  never  adopt  the  academic  formality  of 
that  popular  painter. 

Although  his  resources  in  Paris  were  very 
slender,  Millet  contrived  to  make  several  visits 
to  the  beloved  homestead  in  Normandy.  Dur- 
ing one  of  these  visits  in  1841,  he  painted  sev- 
eral portraits  (some  sign-boards  also),  and  among 
21 


these  portraits  that  of  the  young  girl  of  Cher- 
bourg whom  he  married. 

Millet  was  then  a  large,  strong,  handsome 
young  man  of  twenty-seven.  His  first  wife 
died  within  three  years,  and  in  1845  he  mar- 
ried the  woman  who  became  the  mother  of  his 
large  family,  and  who  remained — until  his 
death,  thirty  years  afterward — his  devoted 
companion  in  his  few  joys  and  many  sorrows. 

Thus  far  fortune  had,  in  a  moderate  way, 
smiled  on  the  artist,  but  now  his  troubles  began 
to  come  thick  and  fast  ;  and  they  only  ended 
with  his  life.  Returning  to  Paris  in  1845, 
Millet  and  his  wife  endured  years  of  dire  pri- 
vation. In  the  winter  of  1848  a  friend  found 
them  in  a  room  without  fire,  and  learned  that 
for  two  days  they  had  had  nothing  to  eat.  Sev- 
eral pictures  were  refused  admission  at  the  Sa- 
lon, and  those  that  were  admitted  found  few 
admirers  and  few  purchasers.  It  was  the  oft- 
repeated  tale  of  so  many  men  of  great  original 
genius  (those  innovators  and  prophets  whose 
tombs  are  devoutly  built  by  posterity)  :  first, 
total  neglect  ;  next,  encountering  opposition  and 
detraction  ;  after  that,  occasioning  violent  con- 
troversies ;  still  later,  seriously  considered  ;  and 
finally  taking  their  place  among  the  immortals. 
When  at  last  renown  came  to  Millet,  it  came 
22 


too  late.  The  strong,  vigorous  man  was  worn 
out  by  long  years  of  neglect,  poverty,  and  dis- 
appointment ;  no  strength  remained  to  gather 
the  harvest  —  and  so  he  died. 

Surely  commonplace  mediocrity  leads  a  hap- 
pier life  than  inspired  genius!  And  may  there 
not  be  among  us  some  unknown  Millets  living 
and  suffering  to-day  ? 

Millet  never  took  kindly  to  Paris.  The  ar- 
tificial glare  and  glitter  were  repugnant  to  his 
simple,  serious  nature,  and  he  was  fain  to  es- 
cape in  1 849  to  the  little  village  of  Barbison, 
on  the  skirts  of  the  forest  of  Fontainebleau. 
Here  he  rented  the  cottage  where  he  lived  for 
twenty-seven  years,  and  where  he  died  on  the 
20th  of  January,  1875,  in  the  sixty-first  year 
of  his  age. 

After  the  master's  death  his  widow  and  chil- 
dren continued  to  occupy  the  now  famous  little 
cottage  at  Barbison,  and  in  1886  some  of  his 
admirers  purchased  this  cottage  and  made 
Madame  Millet  its  owner.  It  was  there  that 
she  resided  to  the  end  of  her  life. 

Millet's  development  in  art  was  steady  and 
gradual.  It  was  only  after  he  had  definitely 
devoted  himself  at  Barbison  to  the  delineation 
of  peasant  life,  that  his  masterpieces  in  painting 
and  etching  were  produced. 

25 


Although  he  was  wretchedly  poor  during 
this  period,  yet  a  few  of  his  contemporaries 
recognized  him  even  then  as  a  great  artist. 
Among  those  were  Theodore  Rousseau,  Charles 
Jacque,  and  the  American  painter  William 
Hunt. 

It  is  well  known  that  Alfred  Sensier  rilled  a 
role,  with  regard  to  Millet,  not  unlike  that 
which  was  rilled  by  James  Boswell  a  hundred 
years  before  with  sturdy  old  Dr.  Samuel  John- 
son. Sensier,  as  well  as  Boswell,  recognized 
the  greatness  of  his  hero,  and  sought  his  society 
on  all  occasions ;  and  each  has  left  an  admirable 
biography  of  the  man  of  his  admiration.  No 
one  could  read  Sensier' s  Life  of  Millet  without 
being  filled  with  esteem  as  well  as  pity  for  the 
true-hearted  man  it  portrays. 

In  etching,  as  in  painting,  Millet  was  thor- 
oughly original  and  entirely  himself.  A  con- 
summate draughtsman,  he  despised  all  tricks  of 
mere  prettiness  and  "  finish,"  and  having  given 
the  essentials  of  a  composition,  he  wisely  stopped 
and  carried  it  no  farther. 

There  is  little  that  is  distinctively  French  in 
his  work;  no  coquetry,  no  superficial  adroit- 
ness or  vivacity ;  but  in  their  place  are  direct 
and  serious  honesty  combined  with  transcen- 
dent ability.  Some  extracts  from  his  letters  to 
26 


Woman  Sewing.  {Etching) 


an  intimate  friend  will  show  how  this  poet  of 
the  poor  saw  his  vocation:  "To  paint  well 
and  naturally,  I  think  an  artist  should  avoid  the 
theatre.' '  "The  human  side  of  art  is  what 
touches  me  most ;  the  gay  side  never  shows 
itself  to  me."  And  of  the  weary  and  hopeless 
toil  of  the  poor,  he  writes :  "To  me  this  is  true 
humanity  and  great  poetry." 

Millet's  etched  work  was  produced  at  a  time 
when  the  art  had  not  as  yet  become  popular, 
and  hence  some  of  his  finest  plates  have  become 
very  scarce ;  indeed,  several  prints,  or  states  of 
prints,  are  unique. 

His  paintings  being  so  well  known,  either 
through  the  originals  themselves  or  through 
etchings  (done  by  other  hands)  and  by  photo- 
graphs taken  from  them,  our  present  concern  is 
with  the  original  etchings  which  the  master 
executed  with  his  own  hand.  Of  these  there 
exist  only  twenty-one  plates,  and  they  include 
some  eight  which  are  mere  studies  made  by 
Millet  of  the  etching  process,  so  that  his  fin- 
ished etched  plates  number  only  thirteen. 

Nearly  every  one  of  these  thirteen  etchings 
is  of  special  interest  because  it  is  the  original 
finished  study  which  the  master  afterwards 
elaborated  into  some  famous  painting.  There 
is  a  saying  among  the  French  artists  to  the 
29 


effect  that  a  man  paints  every  day,  no  matter 
how  he  feels;  but  that  when  he  etches  it  is 
only  on  his  good  days ;  and  the  distinguished 
American  artist  Thomas  Moran  once  said, 
when  looking  over  some  etchings  by  Millet, 
"  I  like  his  etchings  even  better  than  his  paint- 
ings ;  when  he  was  painting  he  was  mainly 
thinking  of  his  color,  but  when  he  was  etching 
he  had  nothing  to  think  of  but  his  drawing." 

Of  Millet's  thirteen  finished  etchings  the 
first  place  is  generally  accorded  to  his  plate  of 
the  u  Woman  Carding  Wool."  We  may 
allow  this  to  be  "  the  chief  among  equals"; 
these  equals  being  the  "Two  Men  Digging," 
the  "Women  Gleaning,"  the  "Man  with  a 
Wheelbarrow,"  the  "Woman  Churning,"  the 
"Shepherdess  Knitting"  and  the  "Peasants 
Going  to  Work." 

There  is  perhaps  no  other  great  etcher  whose 
works  gain  or  lose  so  much  according  to  the 
good  or  the  bad  quality  of  each  individual  proof. 
Millet  was  not  himself  an  expert  printer ;  and 
judging  by  the  very  poor  quality  of  some  proofs 
which  were  unquestionably  printed  for  himself, 
he  did  not  always  seem  to  know  whether  a 
proof  was  good,  middling  or  bad.  Probably 
the  true  explanation  is  that  Millet  could  seldom 
afford  Jio  pay  for  the  services  of  an  expert 
30 


The  Man  Leaning  on  his  Spade.  [Etching) 


printer,  and  an  incompetent  one  is  likely  to 
ruin  the  effect  of  the  finest  plate  in  the  world  ; 
for  a  badly  printed  proof  is  no  better  than  a 
libel  on  the  artist.  If  one  man  pays  five  times 
more  for  a  suit  of  clothes  then  another  man  can 
pay,  the  former  is  very  apt  to  be  the  better 
dressed  of  the  two.  The  dull,  heavy  and  life- 
less impressions  of  Millet's  plates  which  some- 
times shock  the  connoisseur  do  not  exist 
through  any  fault  in  the  plates  themselves;  for 
when  the  plates  were  printed  by  such  a  master 
craftsman  as  Auguste  Delatre  the  result  is  har- 
monious, luminous  and  altogether  beautiful. 
He  generally  printed  Millet's  proofs  on  thin 
old  Japanese  paper  of  a  golden  tone,  or  else  on 
fine  old  Dutch  paper.  These  latter,  equally 
fine,  but  different  in  effect,  were  often  printed 
with  a  brownish  ink.  Delatre  was  by  no 
means  the  only  expert  printer  who  understood 
how  to  get  out  of  Millet's  plates  all  that  the 
master  had  put  into  them,  and  this  fact  makes 
it  the  more  astonishing  that  Millet  could  have 
tolerated  a  considerable  number  of  bad  im- 
pressions. 

It  is,  then,  through  fine  proofs  only  that 
Millet's  etchings  should  be  judged.  Such  seem 
to  have  already  taken  rank  among  the  permanent 
masterpieces  of  the  art — beginning  with  the 

33 


works  of  Diirer  and  Rembrandt  and  coming  down 
to  the  etchings  of  Seymour  Haden  and  Whistler. 

Besides  his  etchings  and  lithographs,  Millet 
also  tried  his  hand  at  wood-engraving,  and  with 
eminent  success.  He  had  the  intelligence  to 
see  that  the  laborious  and  over-elaborate  wood- 
cuts of  his  day  were  no  more  than  feeble  imi- 
tations of  engravings  on  copper  or  steel,  and  so 
he  brought  wood-engraving  back  to  the  sim- 
plicity which  had  been  so  triumphantly  prac- 
tised by  Albert  Diirer  three  centuries  before. 
Diirer' s  engravings  on  copper  still  remain  models 
of  minute  elaboration,  but  when  he  made  a 
woodcut  he  changed  his  method  entirely.  The 
effect  in  his  woodcuts  is  mainly  achieved  through 
the  bold  and  even  coarse  outlines.  Millet  has 
done  the  same — and  with  admirable  results. 
He  seldom  actually  engraved  the  wood  blocks 
upon  which  he  had  drawn  designs  (any  more 
than  Diirer  did),  but,  having  made  some  studies 
in  the  art,  he  had  his  designs  engraved  by  one 
of  his  two  brothers,  Pierre  or  Jean-Baptiste. 
The  large  woodcut  of  the  6  <  Shepherdess  Seated, ' ' 
engraved  byJ.-B.  Millet,  and  the  "Digger 
leaning  on  his  Spade  99  and  the  "  Woman  fill- 
ing Water  Cans,"  engraved  by  Pierre  Millet, 
are  equally  full  of  the  spirit  of  their  great 
brother. 


34 


A  Woman  Churning.  (Etching) 


Fashions  in  art  will  change.  Some  living 
artists  who  have  acquired  great  fame  have 
perhaps  already  <(  outlived  their  immortality," 
while  others,  to-day  unheralded,  will  some 
day  be  famous.  But  in  the  roll  of  honor  of 
the  nineteenth  century  there  is  no  name  more 
certain  to  go  down  to  posterity  as  that  of  a 
master  in  art  than  the  name  of  Jean-Francois 
Millet. 

Note:  //  may  interest  admirers  of  the  mas- 
ter^ s  etchings  to  know  that9  with  the  consent  of 
the  Millet  family,  all  of  his  etched  plates  have 
been  destroyed,  so  as  to  avoid  tbe  possibility  of 
printing  any  more  proofs  from  them. 


37 


The  Shepherdess. 


(Woodcut) 


Oiiginal  St eking 'd  by 

The  following  original  etchings  by  J.-F.  Millet  can  (at 
present)  be  supplied  by  Messrs.  Frederick  Keppel  &  Co., 
20  East  1 6th  Street,  New  York  : 

A  Woman  Hanging  out  Clothes. 
Peasant  Resting. 

The  Man  Leaning  on  his  Spade. 
The  Two  Cows. 

A  Peasant  Seated  (a  very  small  plate). 

Various  Sketches  on  one  plate. 

The  Sea- Weed  Gatherers. 

A  Woman  Sewing. 

A  Woman  Churning. 

Peasant  with  a  Wheelbarrow. 

The  Gleaners. 

Two  Men  Digging. 

The  Watchers. 

The  Wool-Carder. 

The  Woman  Feeding  her  Child. 

The  Shepherdess  Knitting. 

Peasants  Going  to  Work. 

The  Spinner. 

41 


Peasant  Digging. 

Engraved  by  J.-F.  Millet. 

Sketches. 

Engraved  by  J.-F.  Millet. 
Woman  Filling  Water-Cans. 

Engraved  by  Pierre  Millet. 

The  Shepherdess. 

Engraved  by  J.-Baptiste  Millet. 
Digger  Leaning  on  his  Spade. 

Engraved  by  Pierre  Millet. 


The  Sower. 


By  J.-F.  Millet. 


4* 


The  Sower.  (Lithograph} 


